David Davis, the former Conservative leadership contender, chose a pointedly appropriate venue for his speech yesterday setting out an alternative growth strategy for a becalmed Government. The Centre for Policy Studies was established in the mid-Seventies by Sir Keith Joseph and Margaret Thatcher to chart a course out of the economic doldrums into which the country had drifted. As Mr Davis observed, the election of the Tory government in 1979 was a seminal moment in the country’s post-war history, the point at which the “management of inevitable decline” was halted and then reversed.

We have long argued that if the country is not to sink further into Seventies-style torpor, then urgent and imaginative action is required. Yet on first inspection, the measures outlined at the weekend by David Cameron and George Osborne, including boosting capital spending and overhauling planning laws – so as to allow development on the green belt – misjudge the scale of what is required. Indeed, Mr Cameron talks about “ending the dithering” as though he is a bystander, when it is in his power to go much further.

In the upper reaches of the Coalition, it is fashionable to deride the Tory Right for a nostalgic fixation on the Thatcher years. But Mr Davis’s speech at least had the merit of a sense of urgency. And he proposed a range of measures with which many would concur. In particular, this is precisely the moment to give small and medium-sized businesses – which are still creating jobs despite the recession – additional help by removing many of the regulatory burdens they face, including the employment protections that can prevent companies taking on new staff. Germany owes much of its current prosperity to a similar programme of structural labour market reform, and there is no reason why it would not succeed here.

There are many other measures that ought to be considered. Corporation and capital gains taxes should be cut and simplified; employers should be given National Insurance holidays for new jobs; green taxes should be suspended or energy-intensive industries exempted. Most emphatically, Nick Clegg’s idea of new wealth taxes on those who already supply most of the state’s revenue must be rejected. And since tax cuts will affect revenues before growth brings in more money, ministers must be far more ambitious in cutting public spending and rethinking the ways in which government works.

Today, it is expected that Mr Cameron will carry out a reshuffle of his front-bench team. But it will matter not a jot who sits around the Cabinet table unless they are resolutely committed – both Tories and Lib Dems – to getting the economy moving again.